Elizabeth Hernandez found out about the decade-old murder from a flurry of tips sent to her newsroom in August last year.
The tips were all reacting to a YouTube video with a shocking title: "Husband's Secret Gay Love Affair with Step Son Ends in Grisly Murder.” It described a gruesome crime that apparently took place in Littleton, Colorado. Almost two million people had watched it.
“Some people in fact were saying, ‘Why didn't The Denver Post cover this?’” Hernandez, a reporter at the paper, told me. “Because in the video, it makes it sound like it was a big news event and yet, when you Google it, there is no coverage.”
The reason for the lack of coverage was pretty clear to her. In the 26-minute long video, a stilted voice narrated over hazy still images of a neighborhood that really didn’t look like Littleton.
Hernandez called several law enforcement officials and quickly confirmed her suspicions. The murder was fake, and the video was made using generative AI.